Napoleon: A Biography

into account his 'Joseph complex'. In later years Napoleon indulged his elder brother shamelessly, leading one to conclude that ...

to spy on Carlo when he was drinking and gambling in the Ajaccio saloons. There were also more sinister suspicions about Letizia ...

CHAPTER TWO On I 5 December 1779 a veritable cohort of Buonapartes left Corsica, all ultimately headed in different directions. ...

Napoleon with them for a three-week holiday at the family chateau in Thoisy-le-Desert. But Mgr Marbeuf, who had squared this arr ...

repeated the lunch menu. Only on feast days did the monotonous fare vary: one Epiphany Napoleon noted down that the boys had bee ...

Plenty of Latin authors were picked over- Virgil, Caesar, Sallust, Livy, Cicero, Horace, Cornelius Nepos - but Napoleon could ne ...

attack of vomiting. Father Patrault, the head of mathematics, a tall, red­ faced man who was the only one at Brienne to discern ...

contemporaries but only four of them seem authentic, and even these have often been doctored or suffused with the 'wisdom' of re ...

in 1782, when Napoleon announced he wanted to devote his life to science - either producing a general theory of electricity or i ...

Brienne anyway, in hopes of getting the Bertons to take on the eight­ year-old Lucien. The farewell act of patronage Marbeuf had ...

inspector of military schools. On 22 September Des Monts examined Napoleon and found him qualified to enter the military school ...

each boy had a separate cubicle, with an iron bedstead, linen drapery to go over the bed, a chair and shelves, a pewter jug and ...

and by now had a distinct taste for Rousseau and Montesquieu. But also, once again, the student of Napoleon is confronted by a n ...

volume of Etienne Bezout's Cours de Mathematiques, the artilleryman's bible. There then followed a year in artillery school, aft ...

tasted real power. He entered the Army shockingly ill-prepared for military life, at least by modern standards. Knowing nothing ...

roasting in Hell because they were pagans. This idea seemed spectacu­ larly absurd to the young Napoleon. We might add that alth ...

would be the end of his friendship. Laugier either did resist, or was able to persuade Napoleon that he had. But once in Paris t ...

when fully grown. Alfred Adler has made us aware that this is a key feature in the overcompensation of despots; most dictators h ...

CHAPTER THREE Napoleon left the Ecole Royale Militaire, Paris, on z8 October 1785. Before heading south to join the La Fere regi ...

attending classes on mathematics, fortification, chemistry and physics. There was plenty of free time. From the copious notes Na ...